Recruiters & Marketing: A Necessary Alliance

It wasn’t in the job description. It’s not in your title. Nobody told you upfront that it would be required, yet here you are. You’re writing LinkedIn and job ads, employing Facebook targeting, and supporting employer branding left and right. In essence, you’re marketing.

Who are you? None other than the recruiter, of course.

In today’s digitized climate, recruiters must take on extra responsibilities in order to stay effective, up-to-date, and relevant. Using marketing techniques, recruiters can represent themselves and their employer brands in appealing new ways. But why is this necessary? Why should recruiters take on the job of another department?

There are multiple answers to this question, but we will start with the top three:

Social Media

The minute recruiters entered LinkedIn and Facebook, their marketing requirements reached a whole new level.

Think about the number of recruiter messages your candidates receive in a day. Now think about the number of ads they see. Attracting candidates amidst the noise and population on either of these sites requires time, effort, and skill.

Recruiters shot themselves in the foot with that one.

What is it that candidates want to hear? What appeals to them visually? What types of ads do they respond to most frequently? As a recruiter, it is now your job to determine the answers to these questions.

Employer Branding

As a recruiter, you represent either your organization or your client whenever you reach out to a candidate. What message do you send regarding their prospective employer?

Candidates must know who you are representing, why that particular firm deserves their attention, and why they should respond to your inquiries on its behalf. Whether you realize it or not, everything that you post on social media, every word you say regarding your client, and every experience that a candidate has with you affects the employer brand.

This whole marketing thing has some hefty implications, doesn’t it?

Initial Contact

When you craft a LinkedIn message, do you employ cheesy headlines, beg for resumes, and address an entire group at once? Are you surprised when you don’t receive a response?

In this case, you’ve failed at marketing.

Unfortunately, this is all too common among today’s recruiters. Due to little marketing perspective and a poor understanding of the field itself, my employees receive messages like these every day.

What about phone calls? When making a cold call, what type of script do you use? What methods do you use within that script?

More importantly, are these methods effective?

These strategies influence the responses that recruiters receive, the open requisitions they fill, and the reputation they uphold. Whether we realize it or not, marketing wiggles its way into the daily lives of each and every recruiter. To ignore its presence is to abandon the mission entirely.